e Greek cities the domains, the
shops of trade, the merchant ships, in short, all the sources of
financial profit were in the hands of certain rich families. The other
families, that is to say, the majority of the citizens,[102] had
neither lands nor money. What, then, could a poor citizen do to gain a
livelihood? Hire himself as a farmer, an artisan, or a sailor? But the
proprietors already had their estates, their workshops, their
merchantmen manned by slaves who served them much more cheaply than
free laborers, for they fed them ill and did not pay them. Could he
work on his own account? But money was very scarce; he could not
borrow, since interest was at the rate of ten per cent. Then, too,
custom did not permit a citizen to become an artisan. "Trade," said
the philosophers, "injures the body, enfeebles the soul and leaves no
leisure to engage in public affairs." "And so," says Aristotle, "a
well-constituted city ought not to receive the artisan into
citizenship." The citizens in Greece constituted a noble class whose
only honorable functions, like the nobles of ancient France, were to
govern and go to war; working with the hands was degrading. Thus by
the competition of slaves and their exalted situation the greater part
of the citizens were reduced to extreme misery.

=Social Strife.=--The poor governed the cities and had no means of
living. The idea occurred to them to despoil the rich, and the latter,
to resist them, organized associations. Then every Greek city was
divided into two parties: the rich, called the minority, and the poor,
called the majority or the people. Rich and poor hated one another and
fought one another. When the poor got the upper hand, they exiled the
rich and confiscated their goods; often they even adopted these two
radical measures:

1. The abolition of debts;

2. A new partition of lands.

The rich, when they returned to power, exiled the poor. In many cities
they took this oath among themselves: "I swear always to be an enemy
to the people and to do them all the injury I can."

No means were found of reconciling the two parties: the rich could not
persuade themselves to surrender their property; the poor were
unwilling to die of hunger. According to Aristotle all revolutions
have their origin in the distribution of wealth. "Every civil war,"
says Polybius, "is initiated to subvert wealth."

They fought savagely, as is always the case between neighbors. "At
Miletus the poo